A mother holds her daughter while eating ice cream in the streets of Valencia.
-OpEd-
BUENOS AIRES — Any web user consulting the website of Venezuela's INE or National Statistics Institute, as I last tried to do one day early last month, may find this is a waste of time. Our country stopped quantifying its population in 2011. Even the last census from that year, shown on the website, appears as a mass of words and stats that mean little to the general reader. There are no charts or diagrams to give an idea of trends or the bigger picture: just data used as "filling".
The webpage has a section for sectoral reports on consumer patterns, say, or the environment, but not beyond 2013 or 2014. Elsewhere, based on the 2011 census, INE estimates that Venezuela's population will reach 33,728,624 by June 30, without any mention of the seven million or more Venezuelans who have left since 2011. The number is likely rising by the day — not that it bothers the INE — which means there are no figures on how many of us are living inside and outside Venezuela.
So the official organ tasked with "exercising the technical administration of statistical activities of a public character in the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, coordinating the National Statistical System and producing official statistics for the purpose of national planning and the exercise of popular power in public management" has nothing to say about our migratory debacle.
It is not so much a case of incomplete data as of a country being wiped off the records. After 2011, Venezuela entered the world of fiction.
Information sinkhole
Try consulting the webpage of the state oil company PDVSA (Petróleos de Venezuela). I did on May 9 and 10, only to find the page was down for no apparent reason. It just wouldn't load. So on that day and using the country's own oil firm, there was no way of knowing Venezuela's present oil output. It's a secret, or another piece of a lost country.
Turning to the oil ministry website instead — as I did on May 10 — I could not find a single figure as it says nothing about production.
It is as if for the regime, the land of Venezuela is non-existent.
Or if you wanted to know about crime trends, say in 2022, you could consult the interior ministry website. And the Ministry of Popular Power for Internal Relations, Justice and Peace, will tell you... nothing. Zero. You can regale yourself instead with its propaganda — more filling — and notices of non-existent programs.
I've also tried the Health Ministry website to see what I can find. I click on its National Surgery Plan, and it won't open. Absent, or in a coma. I click on Library (Biblioteca), which yields nothing. No documents there. I click on Works and Agreements: nothing at all. The Public Consultation button yields "No Information At Present."
So, there is no public information on illnesses in Venezuela, the state of hospitals or health situation in the various states or districts. It is as if for the regime, the land of Venezuela is non-existent. The Health Ministry used to publish an Epidemiological Bulletin for decades. I couldn't find it. It must have disappeared into the sinkhole of no news is good news.
Statistics must be halted while Venezuela is being ransacked, because facts and transparency are corruption's enemies. So if your aim is to dishearten, divide and weaken a society, first click on censorship.
Corruption's enemies
I have very little to say about the Education Ministry website. I couldn't open it. I trekked on toward the finance ministry, or Ministry of Popular Power for the Economy, Finance and External Trade. I found some stuff there: quarterly tax statistics — up to 2009. The rest was propaganda and irrelevant information like praise for the Cuban dictatorship on its 62nd birthday or for that criminal Lenin on the 153rd anniversary of his birth. More filling.
Venezuela is a country without official statistics.
As for the Agriculture Ministry, it has no website, in truth. What we can say about these websites is that their user-unfriendly design, intention to divulge nothing and a mix of outdatedness and abundant lies all convey the state's contempt for citizens. It is not that these agencies never got around to updating figures. They are implementing a systematic policy of hiding, confusing and distracting people from the reality of a country in a state of utter ruin.
Any information you can access on Venezuela will be from non-governmental organizations, international agencies, religious groups or universities. Venezuela is a country without official statistics. Nothing can be planned with any rigor, as no enterprise has a clear starting point or plausible projections. The state of course has little interest in people finding out about the dismal results of its incompetence and predatory practices.
Statistics must be halted while Venezuela is being ransacked, because facts and transparency are corruption's enemies. So if your aim is to dishearten, divide and weaken a society, first click on censorship.
*Otero is chief editor of the Caracas paper El Nacional, and lives in exile in Madrid.
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